Tradition: A long-established custom or practice that has the effect of an unwritten law. From the Latin root traditio, a surrender.
I attend a 12 Steps and 12 Traditions meeting in The New City. I attended one in The Old City for many years as well, but we didn't do a Tradition every month. I never understood why. If the Steps tell us How It Works then the Traditions tell us Why It Works. Whenever I attend a meeting that I don't think is very good -- let's be honest, there are some out there -- I usually find that I'm in a room where the Traditions are being trampled underfoot.
Last night was Tradition Eight, which states that we don't charge for our services. We can pay people who do non-recovery type work like print books and staff offices, but the face to face stuff is totally free. I can only imagine how I would have reacted had some variation of the following scenario played out at my first meeting: "OK, Horseface, we charge $100 for an initial evaluation but we will waive that if you can't afford it. Dues are $50 a month. If you sign up for two years we'll drop that to $45 with the first two months free. AND we waive the initiation fee for any family members that you bring along. Now, I have paperwork prepared . . . " Absent all of that I was still wary that I had joined some weirdo cult for a long time.
I have to remember that The Big Book was published in 1939 but The Traditions didn't come out until 1946, and they weren't ratified until the 1950 International Convention. A lot of kooky drunks had complicated the hell out of everything by then. It was the wild west for a while. We didn't put The Traditions together calmly and thoughtfully; we put them together as a survival mechanism.
How cool is that the root of the word "tradition" implies powerlessness and surrender?
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1 comment:
You have gone to the roots of the word tradition. i didn't know that the waord has such a meaning. Thanks for sharing the information.
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